


Three Prayers in a Foreign Language

by Firelight_and_Rain



Series: A Soldier Familiar With Defeat [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Deep Lore (But Not Really), Gen, M/M, Pining, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: Absolutely nothing results from Sten challenging the Warden to a duel for the responsibility and the blame for saving the world, cold premeditated violence, before Haven.





	Three Prayers in a Foreign Language

It was cold, and they should not have been there. There, in the north, going further into the north, as if they were going to climb up into the sky. Out of a nightmare and into a fairytale. (That he should not have been there was a mantra that had become more threadbare than the pages of the book of prayers in Qunlat. It was indulgent. It was indulgent like the red frustration rising up behind his eyes promised to be when it would finally spill over, which it inevitably would not do, if he were still where anything was right. But he wasn’t).

Sten kneed his way to the front of the party - which wasn’t far, needing just a small burst of speed to get around Shale’s ground-eating and impervious strides. They turned their head slightly to watch him go by with a faint grinding nose, eyes twinkling bright and merry. An illusion. Still, Shale’s impervious and elevated mood was enough to set his blood boiling just that little bit more. This was not some Orlesian’s vacation. (He considered deliberately confusing Mateu’s national allegiance just to aggravate him. He knew that there were more nations in the South than Fereldan and Orlais.)

“Commander!”

Warden-Commander Mateu Marangoz stopped and turned his shoulders to him. It was difficult to read his expression with just his eyes and eyebrows above the thick scarf that the witch had knit for him and which he’d let ride up over his nose. It was often difficult to tell what Mateu was thinking, even if it was not always so difficult to tell what his feelings on a matter were, with his soft southern heart. Mateu raised one eyebrow. “- Yes, Sten?”

“Interesting strategy. Tell me, do you intend to keep going north until it becomes south and attack the archdemon from the rear?” The words were so satisfying that he wasn’t prompted to cross his arms at Mateu.

Mateu’s reply came smoothly. “This is as necessary as attacking the archdemon is going to be.”

“Really? It is some other-world nonsense, which I did not think you were prone to.”

The rest of the party gathered up behind them like water behind a dam of sticks and stones.

“It’s not nonsense, the fact that we’re all working together like this -” The Chantry sister.

“That the old man won’t help us until we help him isn’t other-worldly at all.” Arainai.

Mateu’s face lightened at the Sister’s words and set with a light strength at the Crow’s. “I think we have a watertight plan.”

“We are chasing a fairytale.”

“If I can’t convince you that we’re doing the right thing -.” Mateu didn’t even pause on the ‘we are’; naive he might have been to Sten’s eyes (to help Sten avoid looking at what Mateu had lost and seeing how much honor the man had kept) but petty he wasn’t. “I’ll simply order you to follow me.” Sten considered that he might have wanted to say ‘follow us’ but since Sten was in the vanguard that wouldn’t have made much sense.

Sten raised his chin. “Warden-Commander, you only have that title because no one else in your kith survived - except for Alistair -”

“Hey.”

“By his own wishes.”

At that, Alistair was quiet enough for the argument to roll on past him.

“I’m taking command,” Sten said.

Mateu seemed genuinely surprised. “Do you think all the rest of us will follow you?”

Sten wasn’t sure. Not a leader of men, he had spent enough time with leaders of Qunari - not that they were ever apart from Qunari, that Qunari would be lead by something other than what was encompassed by the Qun - to suspect that they wouldn’t. Still. If any of them did follow him back to their mission, that was so many more souls working together against the Blight, and that was mandate enough. (So many less souls, if Mateu’s dream of how this would end didn’t end up having the witch’s power that it had held over them all so far. And could a soul weigh more or less? In losing any one of them, would they lose the world? A question that any young soldier could answer, wouldn’t even entertain. One that Mateu was living a different answer to).

He stepped closer to Mateu, as much to give himself space from their spectators as in an attempt to intimidate his soon not to be? Commander. Hands to Asala at his shoulder, and he waited until it was halfway out of its sheath before saying, “Defend yourself, Commander, and let’s settle this.”

Mateu swallowed anything else he might have said and unsheathed his own sword, taking a step back. It wasn’t back far enough to tell Sten that he wasn’t going to accept this duel.

*

Mateu wins.

It’s a relief.

Sten doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if he became something capable of changing even a small patch of this foreign, hostile ground, of seeing the ice melt away from some strange new bloom -

*

Mateu is laughing. Hasn’t bothered to take off his scarf. If he tries to parry Asala this time, Sten isn’t going to pull back at the last minute, is going to sacrifice the guard of his future for ending this now -

*

(- Leliana had pushed forward almost between them, quite more alarmed than Sten or Mateu had been. “Wait, wait! Oh, this is just typical -”

“She has a point,” the Crow had drawled. “Oh, not about who gets to be on top, it’s perfectly bracing, by all means. But bare steel?”

“- Yes, I’m the senior Warden here, no, Sten, I don’t wanna duel, but you need to bind those swords -”)

Sten overextends himself. Mateu pushes into the space left by the overextension of his only shield. He pushes with his sword and his whole broad body.

*

It was cold, and he still shouldn’t have been there. It remained wrong. No question of anyone else’s guilt. The knight’s parlor trick had put paid to any questioning their shared guilt. It wasn’t an additional regret to be relieved that his Commander was closer to him in nature than he’d thought.

(Thought. Not necessarily more than he’d felt. This dissonance between the two, this newfound tendency of his feelings to hare after things like starveling dogs, was a constant headache like a splinter in the foot).

The Sister had hung up Mateu’s scarf after their duel, and the witch had dried it with a spell after looking imperiously at the Sister like she was judging the Sister before the Sister could judge her. Such fraction over such a small thing. How did southerners ever get anything done?

Sten plucked it off the branch they’d hung it on. The Warden-Commander stood still in his armor on a bare spine of rock looking out over the grey sky. Sten had unshelled himself, laboriously. He himself didn’t know what he would have done if anyone had volunteered their hands to help. (Needless to say, no one had).

“Doesn’t the south know that metal chills quickly, or is that a discovery I’m in the process of witnessing?”

Mateu turned in surprise. “- Don’t you wear a gambeson under your plate?”

“Yes. But however inhospitable this mountain has been, I don’t think that we’re about to be descended upon by dragons.” He considered how many unlikely things had already happened to them in this unlikely quest, and before it. “Well. At this rate, if we are to worry about descending dragons - when we have walked away from the archdemon - we might as well wear our full kit everywhere. And a northern giant in full kit would not at all alarm your southern allies.” He didn’t crack a smile, but he essayed to put one in his voice.

“- Of course. I’ll come back to camp soon.” After a long moment, where Sten looked out into the empty space thinking of the sea on an ill-tempered morning, he added, “I guess I’m not thinking much about comfort right now.”

“I’m. I am thinking of the stew back at camp. - And that the things that have happened, will not un-happen.”

Mateu half turned to him with a question in his eyes.

“Yes, all of the things that I would do differently. But also each felled darkspawn. And the days between we might have died, and the day when we will know that we will not die.”

“I’m not sure you understand the idea behind penance,” Mateu said, chiding, teasing.

Sten thought of the cage in Lothering. He knew that he was lucky that it had been made for large, burly men - because that is what a southern bandit is - and also that he himself had always been small for a Qunari. “Yes,” he said, because he did. “I also know that freezing yourself is cheating.”

Mateu looked at him, then out, down. When Sten stepped closer with the scarf in his hands, Mateu took it from him with both hands, and knocked his shoulder against him.

*

At least the dwarves are doing something to make up for making me knock into every lintel down here, Sten thought sourly.

The food was indeed genuinely very good. Sten missed fruit, by the Qun, green growing things but he couldn’t say that he hadn’t missed it since coming south in the first place or that he’d expected better going underground. Morrigan had complained, fortunately not within their host Harrowmont’s immediate hearing. It was a warm and comfortable dinner. Sten was picking at his plate in order to avoid making small talk.

He’d been drinking milk instead of the dwarves’ potent ale. He was not a teetotaler, as the Sister had gently teased him for being, but he didn’t want to feel any less in control of the situation than he already did. Mateu got up from the table where he’d been sat at the head of the table beside Pyrral. He passed around the table, in his hands a pitcher full of fine liquor as if it was water for washing hands with, with as much ceremony as if they’d all been invited to a Magister’s dinner party. (Sten had never been invited to a Magister’s dinner party, and wouldn’t have accepted an invitation if he’d been. But after all this southern unorthodoxy, he could almost see himself at one, provided he planned to spill wine on the carpet during).

Mateu reached down and pulled towards him the fine small cup at Sten’s left hand, where Sten had set it aside. There’s the susurrus of movement over cloth, and a touch at Sten’s shoulder like a perfunctory but polite tap. Sten didn’t move, didn’t duck forward or to the side, and Mateu’s braids dragged back over his shoulder as he straightened up from pouring the liquor. The room felt suddenly larger, but somehow, it wasn’t the space that Sten had been craving.

*

Sten decided to drink, because was the polite thing to do (and once upon a time he’d wanted to serve the Qun by meeting important people, thinking that the south would have some rhyme or reason for what it considered important), and also because he was feeling more and more cold in this long low hall where everyone was laughing. Well, not everyone.

Enough people were laughing that maybe Pyrral could pretend it was everyone, because as far as Sten could tell no noble could see past the ruff on their collar. (Given that that was an Orlesian fashion specifically and Sten had yet to visit Orlais, he was unsure if was a mistaken impression on his part about the south; many of those suspicions that he harbored are, indirectly, Orlais’ fault). That this hadn’t got them all killed yet seemed improbable. It was one small point in the youth Aeducan’s favor. (Although Sten knew that some of his southern companions couldn’t tell, he was not himself particularly aged. Still, if he could lord it over them, most of them, he would).

And the priestess leaned forward with a gleam in her blue eyes. “Have you all heard the tale of Chevaliers Dieudonne and Jocelyn?”

“No,” Harrowmont says, “but I’d be happy to hear about your people’s knights.”

Yes, Sten thought, maybe our knights will be good enough to get you off your ass. Maybe the best of us will serve - because Mateu will win your fight, and at least get what the both of you want. 

“I’m still not Orlesian,” Mateu murmured in a performative sulk, although a recruit had only ever made that assumption the once. An odd way to memorialize the little elf.

“Wait, you’re not?” Alistair widened his eyes at him. “Quick, Leliana, think up something to make us Fereldans look good. Do these chevaliers like dogs?”

“Still not Fereldan.”

“Well, sure,” Alistair said. “But as far as most - surfacers are concerned, in Fereldan you’re either Ferelden or Orlesian. That’s partly why -”

“We’re coming to you directly,” Mateu concluded smoothly in Pyrral’s direction.

“It is admirable that the Ferelden have such patriotic feeling,” Leliana said, “but during a Blight we are all each others’ countrymen.”

“Indeed,” Pyrral said with reserve, and then with reluctance, “like how our thaigs used to come to each others’ aid before the Deep Roads were lost to us.”

Leliana’s eyes shone. “Oh, but even in true camaraderie loss is possible.” She pushed out from her chair to circle around to the far end of the table, her lute hanging at her hip. Sten hadn’t been suspicious of its inclusion in what passed for a fine outfit after what was months on the road; he hadn’t thought she’d take the diplomatic risk of performing for this foreign lord, but now that he understood, he was curious.

Leliana did not lift her lute to perform, but leaned forward on the table and challenged them all with her eyes to listen. “This story is more commonly played than sung. We don’t have experienced players here -”

The Crow gave her a cloying smile, “Sister, between the two of us, I am sure that we are equal to any performance.”

She didn’t seem offended and returned the smile, although already at that orator’s emotional distance from the rest of them. “Ser Mateu of course would be our protagonist, Ser Dieudonne -”

“Don’t you mean won’t he be?” Alistair asked, settling back into his chair with his hands laced behind his head as he settled into his role as audience, which Sten thought he was already well-primed for. His knee drifted towards the tabletop as if he was going to swing his heels onto the tabletop, and Mateu shoved it back down unsubtly, although not as unsubtly as Sten would have done.

“Well - he’ll be our protagonist. But this play doesn’t have a happy ending.” Leliana sighed like she regretted that, but kept an eye towards Pyrral at the head of the table. Pyrral was watching them all with polite interest, and Mateu with a little more genuine interest at Leliana’s praise.

“Thank you for not jinxing me.”

“Are you not both Andrastian?” Morrigan asked from up the table, holding her goblet of imported wine with exaggerated grace.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Alistair asked.

“If the Maker rewards heroism, should he not do so without acting fickle?”

“Unfortunately,” Mateu said, eyes dark, “there are more forces in the world than the Maker’s grace.” He looked uncertain, in profile to further up the table maybe to conceal that uncertainty from Pyrral. Sten hoped that Pyrral knew him much less than he knew him. Hoped, knew? Sten felt that they’d, himself and Mateu, talked heart to heart, but then southerners sometimes kept their hearts in odd places.

Like in an urn on a sacred mountain guarded by demons. It sounded like a child’s story of the south.

Somehow, the dashing knights had contented themselves to remain within the south’s own stories, to comfort southern children, and had not set out to trouble -

“As someone who does not believe in the Maker -” one of the other dwarves at the table gave him a grateful look, but since Sten wasn’t talking to them and had come into Orzammar very comfortable with the idea that he wouldn’t be responsible for diplomacy, to the point of being rude, he continued to talk to Mateu alone, “I think you will do fine even with fickle luck. You have so far.”

Mateu sent Sten a large-eyed look, surprised. “- Thank you. You should know, all of you, that I will try my hardest. The Maker helps those who helps himself,” he said, with a smaller and more tentative smile than the wide ivory crescent of delight he’d worn after landing Sten’s ass in the dust outside Haven.

“I know,” Sten said.

Mateu continued to stare at him for a moment. The Crow looked insufferably knowing at them. Pyrral looked impressed. Probably over something else.

Mateu turned to Leliana. “What’s this story, then?”

*

If the Deshyr Harrowmont permits me to declaim? Yes, it’s a very great honor to, it’s just that I’m a little rusty -

Oh thank you -

Yes, anyway, the story doesn’t change. I’m quite used to interruptions, I used to teach little children the Chant. And it is a beautiful story! It’s quite a beautiful story, I’d be happy to sing it if you’d like, but it’s not as exciting to most people as this story. Which was very popular with the older children, although Sister Petunia got - over-excited over it, which I suppose taught me. Again, match the story to the audience, Sister Leliana -

Chevalier Dieudonne was a knight of Orlais at the time, and very prideful. He had a playful pride that meant not many resented him for it, but spent much of his time between grand tourneys practicing and celebrating his former wins with his friends from the tourneys. He hadn’t arrived in Val Royeaux with many friends, and there remained rumors that he hadn’t been born in Val Royeaux or Orlais at all. Still, he was well-loved.

And he loved himself in close proportion to how well his close friends loved him, and, because pride is sanctioned for heroes, everyone was more-or-less happy.

Yes, I know. But more-or-less happy still admits for much less happiness, doesn’t it? Stop interrupting my story, or I’ll interrupt with my lord doth protest too much when you’re cheerful over -

Yes, I’m sorry, I’ll get back to the story! You all have awful manners, it’s taking much too much getting used to.

Chevalier Jocelyn rode into Val Royeaux a few days before the tourney. He -

It’s a man’s name in Orlais.

Chevalier Jocelyn claimed to be friends with Dieudonne, but also seemed surprised that Dieudonne was so widely known and liked, which put the gossips into a bind. Either this man wasn’t really Dieudonne’s friend, which explained why he didn’t know this obvious detail about Dieudonne’s life but also if he didn’t know that Dieudonne was well-to-do and well loved why had he bothered to put up such a ruse anyway? Or if he really was Dieudonne’s friend, what had happened that he hadn’t heard of his friend’s doings in these many happy years? Thus the gossips left him alone, and Dieudonne saw Jocelyn again when Jocelyn was, embarassingly, trapped behind a large cart full of chickens. Passing through on his charger Dieudonne let down his hand to this frustrated stranger, and lifting him up Dieudonne saw that it was indeed his old friend Jocelyn, who’d remained in the north with ambition to become a Grey Warden.

Dieudonne was so grateful to have his friend back that he didn’t ask how it came to be that he was here. He welcomed Jocelyn into his company, even though Jocelyn admitted that night, when Val Royeaux began to be drowsy, disrobed from the white and gold and jewels of the day into the grey and blue satins of and linens of evening, that he was there to compete in the Tourney and that so he and Dieudonne would be competing against each other. Dieudonne was glad to cross swords with his friend, since that rough play was Dieudonne’s favorite thing out of the many diversions open to him as Val Royeaux was open to him. Jocelyn saw this with some misgiving. Dieudonne saw this misgiving, and promised to give Jocelyn a show during the opening matches of the Tourney.

This much he did, but no chevalier remains the sweetheart of the Tourney forever. That transience made the Tourney seem that much prettier, which I will admit makes it of a kind with other Orlesian fashions, although I’ve been to the Tourney among important Orlesians and I remember it fondly. Dieudonne had no trouble inviting his rival to spar with him in the festivities leading up to the Tourney. Jocelyn was invited and came, although he had some misgivings about Dieudonne’s pride, being himself of a more severe character than Dieudonne, which had been transformed into piety by Jocelyn’s proximity as a Warden to glory without reward or comfort. His rival, a man of ambiguous power named Rainier who’d gained some infamy out of skirmishes in the Dales, had yet to close with Dieudonne on the field of battle.

And when he did, although the crowd about them was nothing compared to the crowd that was predicted for the day of the Tourney, he felled Dieudonne. He would have felled him more gracefully if Dieudonne, conscious of Jocelyn’s keen eyes on him, had not found even a defeat in play shameful and had not then fought past the better part of valor.  
What was worse for Dieudonne was that Jocelyn didn’t want to comfort him as his confidant and partisan after such a shameful defeat. When I first heard this story as a little girl, I resented Jocelyn for such a poor showing - if they were true friends to each other, shouldn’t Jocelyn feel bad for his friend, when Dieudonne had fought for Jocelyn’s honor? When I had grown, I could see how Jocelyn might resent that Dieudonne had placed himself in danger for him without asking him about it. Now, I will step back, and let you decide how you feel about these two. Although I’m still very fond of them, and will remain very fond of them.

Jocelyn asked Dieudonne over breakfast, when the air was sweet and and Jocelyn felt better able to be sweet despite his own nature, if Dieudonne would sit out this Tourney. Dieudonne was very surprised by this request, since he thought that Jocelyn had come to him to see him as the Grand Chevalier, and in fact could not think why else and what else Jocelyn would come back to him after all this time. But Rainier had lamed Dieudonne in his side, and Jocelyn worried to see his friend’s pride fall in front of so many people. He hadn’t thought that Dieudonne could have changed as much as he himself had changed since they had been boys together, although in fact they had never had had that close and tumultuous friendship that covers the first deaths and rebirths of a personality. So now Jocelyn knew that Dieudonne was Dieudonne the Chevalier, and he admired his sweet expansive arrogance the way most of Dieudonne’s friends came to. And he feared to see Dieudonne unlearned Dieudonne the Chevalier, although he suspected it was inevitable, and knew as a Warden that it would be cowardice to flee from it.

So Dieudonne was surprised and asked Jocelyn right-out why Jocelyn would ask this of him, which being an act of intimacy was either an act of arrogance or of courage. Jocelyn, despite being a Warden, shied away from this bravery and claimed that he simply wanted to see Dieudonne win (not, necessarily, that he wanted Dieudonne to win because Dieudonne wanted to win. He was very unsure how much of his own arrogance Dieudonne wanted or expected to see reflected in himself). Dieudonne was flattered - and Jocelyn rushed to explain that Dieudonne must rest and heal before the final matches of the Tourney. (Dieudonne was so popular in that time that he could insist on his place in the later matches without earning it through earlier matches). Since they had no Enchanter Wynne with them, this would take quite a long time -

Yes, of course I know that -

I’m sorry.

Of course. Flattered by Jocelyn’s concern, Dieudonne agreed to Jocelyn’s plan, which was that Jocelyn would take Diuedonne’s place in all of his matches but the last and so give Dieudonne as much time as he graciously could to recover, to defeat Rainier, which seemed to both of them to be the natural order of things and which more than Dieudonne’s injury was what had gone awry in the course of their new meeting. But since Jocelyn was a new player on the Val Royeaux stage, they were both quiet over the thought of asking the fixers of the Grand Tourney to admit this unknown man. So Dieudonne had the thought that Jocelyn would enter under Dieudonne’s name. They did not look even so similar as to be brothers, but they were confident that no one would know their ruse so long as Jocelyn fought well. And Jocelyn held himself with such reserved pride that Dieudonne, thinking that they must be similar for he still held a great affection for Jocelyn, the shame of falling before him not enough to extinguish his easy pride, was touched that Jocelyn would fight in his place instead of offended and confident that Jocelyn would fight, if not as well as he himself would, well enough to win. It was arrogance that assured Dieudonne that whoever fought under his name was sure to win, but it wasn’t a desire to shame others. Jocelyn’s own motivations were obscured to him.

Well! Let’s all guess who won that final Tourney fight - Harrowmont, Lord, you needn’t guess, not that you can’t! but I don’t find I need to trip you up, I haven’t been on the road with you, and if I had been I’m sure that you’d have very good manners. Lord Rainier was eager to join with Dieudonne, or Jocelyn under Dieudonne’s name as he was, and Jocelyn readily resented that eagerness. But to Jocelyn and Dieudonne’s surprise, Rainier felled Dieudonne again, even Dieudonne’s shadow. And although Jocelyn yielded more gracefully than the true Dieudonne had, Rainier, acting under some geas, insisted that Jocelyn remove his helmet so that Rainier could thank him gracefully for the bout. Jocelyn was no noble, but he wasn’t deaf to the demand couched in Rainier’s pretty words. Removing his helmet, Rainier leaned over him like a raven alighting and called out loudly, “Here is a deserter!”

And although it shocked Dieudonne to hear it it was the truth. Jocelyn, although a Grey Warden, had walked away from his fellows and so earned the infamy of desertion for himself. What demon drove him to do so isn’t the concern of this story. I will say, though, that he did not walk out in the summer of his glory or his good work, and that the fall had not come, heralding this eventual winter, in response to any disgrace that he himself had wrought. Sometimes a Tourney-man fell from grace. And sometimes a Warden walks through a Blight, although there were not enough darkspawn in those days to menace whole countries the way that they do now. Dieudonne did not understand these two truths, although Jocelyn had cause to understand the second. He’d understood it, but he’d despised it, and had come to Val Royeaux seeking a summer of simple happiness.

Jocelyn bowed his head and fell silent. Dieudonne sprang up from where he had been hiding in old rags among the groundlings. “He’s no deserter, he came to help me in my hour of need! Look!” And he held up his tunic to show the bruising that Lord Rainier had left, as on the skin of a fruit.

Rainier retorted that fellow-feeling was common enough among the lower classes, and that love alone did not a knight make. While the crowd was enthralled by what was unfolding, the judges of the Tourney were scandalized by Dieudonne’s flight from his match with Rainier. They didn’t care for Jocelyn, either, not having had time to be convinced that Jocelyn’s presence as a fighter was to their good. They were suspicious and small-minded men by nature, which probably is no revelation. And although they had no way to know Jocelyn’s crime, they took Rainier’s word for it.

“Why won’t you believe me, Dieudonne, I’ve been your champion, I’ve never curried trade with blackguards among the visitors! If this man can’t be a deserter in my eyes, as you’ve vested your trust in me, you must also vest your trust in him.”

It was difficult for Jocelyn to speak at that moment. In great shame and despair, it can be like a river-rock is sitting on your chest. But he spoke, to Rainier, “I acknowledge your charge. Let me duel for it.”

The judges of the games cried out that there was no obligation, no obligation at all, for Rainier to again fight a man he had just defeated. Dieudonne climbed up into the stands to face the judges. Also to be seen. He said, “I will fight in Jocelyn’s place as he has fought in mine.”

They were disinclined to cede to this idea. Diuedonne himself had already lost to Rainier, and admitted it publically. However, the crowd still loved Diuedonne, even if Diuedonne himself had forgotten about them in the joy of recovering Jocelyn. Rainier again turned the page on this tale, by calling up to the judges, I will fight them both! The crowd roared with approval, and it was decided.

And here, the good friends won. It is said that Lord Rainier’s blood ran black, upon any decisive blow. It’s also been fashionable, although hardly every year, for Rainier is still the villain of this story, to claim descendancy from Rainier. It won’t be any surprise to you, dear listeners, to hear that there’s no evidence saying ‘here Rainier lived, here Rainier offended someone, here Rainier was disowned … here, in fact, Rainier existed at all’ like is trivial to find for many other Orlesian nobles. But I have seen in drawing rooms and attics some crests of a green serpent. Invariably they’re tied to some distant relative who won handily at a Tourney but didn’t stick around to leave more stories than just that. What kind of other stories could he have left?

Having got what they wanted, the crowd fell silent. Yes, Diuedonne and Jocelyn had fought well, honorably, and had won. But what had they won? After all, they’d had to mangle the venerable rules of the game to get their victory. At that Diuedonne decided that he was done with the Tourney forever. Not out of a fear of being in the cold of Val Royeaux. He’d never known that fate well enough to fear it. No, Diuedonne decided then, without fear, that they were in the autumn of his name. It was time for them both to leave.

So they did, leaving that gaudy crown for the victor of the Tourney for Lord Rainier if he wanted to wear it. And to scandalize the court, he did, and looked very fierce in it. It’s said that he even walked off with the crown, so that they had to commission another one.

We don’t know where Diuedonne or Jocelyn went. They didn’t stay in Val Royeaux, which was a great wound to the gossips. Perhaps they became Highwaymen, or Wardens. Because there’s always a choice to be made - and I like to think that they decided to become heroes, because that was still a choice, heroes really do exist outside of what we can see in the noon-light of stories.

*

The rooms they were given were long and wide, but still cramped for Sten. He slept poorly.

In his sleep, he half-woke to a smell that tickled at his memory. He knew that Mateu was awake, but hoped that he would go back to sleep. Because then he wanted to get up, too. But there was nothing to say to him. Nothing that hadn’t been said with their bodies fighting in the snow near Haven. Nothing - there could be nothing more.

In the morning, he realized that he had been smelling citrus in a sweet tea. A stronger version of what Mateu would sometimes make during early morning watches. He’d often shared it with him.

He never would have thought they’d be able to find it in Orzammar. He told himself it had been just a dream.


End file.
